


Leave Me Alone / Wanna Go Home

by SweatingHerLadyBollocksOff



Category: Scott & Bailey
Genre: Angst, Brief references to alcoholism, F/F, Fix-It, Post-Series, Worried Wives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:20:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28798989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweatingHerLadyBollocksOff/pseuds/SweatingHerLadyBollocksOff
Summary: Gill is often Not Okay. Julie is always Too Worried. They make each other worse, sometimes, but then they always make each other better.
Relationships: Julie Dodson/Gill Murray
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8





	Leave Me Alone / Wanna Go Home

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains brief references to alcoholism and relapse. It deals more broadly with post-traumatic recovery, and there's also a brief reference to animals getting hurt.   
> Everyone ends up okay in the end, since it's one of my fics, that's pretty much a given.  
> I'm not usually one for Angst but this just flew out of my fingers somehow.   
> Inspired by 'Pretending', Orla Gartland

'Janet Scott's phone, leave a message.'   
'Jan? It's Julie. Dodson. Listen - I know you're at work, but we - I - need you. Please. It's Gill. She's safe, just - Can you meet me at ours - at the house, as soon as you can?'

* * *

  
She must have just missed Janet, since her phone rings just moments later. 'Hi, Jan. Thanks for calling me back' Julie begins, remembering to get the pleasantries out of the way before she ruins the poor woman's weekend. Hopefully Janet won't detect the edge to her voice, the slight breathlessness as she gets out of the car and shuts the door too loudly. If she does, she doesn't say anything, and Julie's grateful for it without realising as much. 'What's happened, Julie?' Janet asks, ever present and direct, and it's the only approach Julie is able to process and cope with at the moment. 'Gill's in a bit of a crisis. She's - not been herself.' She needs to say more than that, to make it make sense, but somehow she can't find the words. There's a heavy pause before Janet says her name again. 'Sorry. Yeah, it's - it's not like it was after Helen, it's not that - urgent, I guess. She's more just - fizzled out.' Janet hums, and she realises she's still not making any sense. 'When she retired, we both stopped drinking. Haven't even had any in the house, and then last week she comes home from Tesco with four bottles of wine like it's just normal, Jan. Wouldn't let me talk to her about it, so I just - I left it, which was stupid. Stupid. And then - well. We had a bit of an argument. She started chucking most of the contents of the kitchen cupboards, not at me, but near me - ' Julie pauses to catch her breath, and she can practically feel Janet's concern through the phone. 'And how's she been after you argued?' Jan asks, trying to get to the bottom of what the problem is now, today, and Julie knows she's not going to get away with a lie. 'I've been staying at a mate's.' She says it like a confession, an admission of guilt, and maybe it is. She's been a shit wife, on occasion, and it feels likely to Julie that this whole episode is going to go down in history as one of those times that she's Let Gill Down. Hopefully it won't be fucking terminal. 'Right' is all Janet says, for a moment, in that voice she uses when the puzzle pieces of a case have fallen together, and it makes Julie's toes curl. Her marriage isn't something to be solved, to be autopsied, not least whilst it's still alive. Or at least she hopes it is.   
  
'Yeah. So - I don't really know. She hasn't been talking to me. She said something about going down to see Sammy in Brighton, so I thought maybe that's what she'd done, and she wanted to get some headspace or whatever -' she feels ridiculous for ever having convinced herself that was the truth. Gill's clearly been sat at home all week waiting for Julie to come back, and yet again she's not been there for her. 'Okay - ' Janet hums diplomatically, and Julie realises she hasn't yet given Jan the ending, the bit that ties it all together. 'Anyway, what it is - one of our neighbours has just called me to say that early this morning he's spotted Gill wandering around in her nightie, no shoes. In this rain, I mean - and walking all over the road in the dark and everything. Like some fucking wandering old lady' Julie sighs deeply, sheltering under the front of the house from the rain in question. Should she knock or use her key? It's insensitive, her simile, given the recent loss of Dorothy, but Janet politely doesn't mention it. 'So - what do you need from me, Jules? I can be there, but - does she need something? A doctor? I can call Elise, she's not - she'll know enough, to know if we need to take her - somewhere to get some help' Janet reasons, stopping short of saying the H word, and Julie's grateful for that too. 'Can you just - come? Please. She'll talk to you better than she will me' Julie asks, stopping short of begging only with great concentrated effort. 'I can't make it for at least a half hour, Jules, I'm so sorry. But I'll be there as soon as I can, I promise.'   
  
She goes for her key in the end, knowing Gill won't answer the door if she's a state. The house - their house - is upsettingly quiet, and she rubs a hand roughly over her face as she slips her shoes off. Get it together, Dodson. You won't be any bloody help to her if you're crying already. It's the absence more than anything, that gets her choked up in the hallway, the lack of Gill's favourite songs playing too loudly from the kitchen, or the background tracks of shitty daytime TV, or her laugh, God, her laugh. She should never have left. Stupid. Stupid. 'Gill?' she calls, and gets nothing. 'Mouse?' she offers instead, and tries not to cough against the constricting memories of post-shag cuddles, stroking Gill's soft smooth hair, holding her sharp little hip in her hand, feeling like she could just consume this tiny little woman if she was allowed to. Could just cover her up with two big hands, keep her safe. Protective, possessive, comforting, controlling - it's an uneasy line that she'd thought she's been learning to walk, but maybe not. She doesn't even know what it's about, this latest wobble in a long history of slight unsteadiness, but her automatic reaction is to blame herself until proven otherwise. Gill's therapist would have a field day if she ever got her hands on Julie, and maybe there's a take home message there, something she should dwell on and consider. She doesn't have the time.   
  
There's an answering 'here' from upstairs, subdued but loud enough to not be quite as close to the edge of a post-Helen style breakdown as she'd feared, though she takes them two at a time just to make sure. Gill's sat up at the head of the bed, her little feet tucked up under her, her Kindle abandoned next to her on the bed, and she looks - okay? She looks okay. Somehow this is more baffling than if ever calm, unflappable Gill had been balled up in tears and snot and those awful, shaky sobs that made Julie want to curl up and sob herself last time. Gill being outwardly okay when everything inside of them is wrong is her least favourite flavour of Problem. 'Nice of you to grace me with your presence' Gills sniffs, and she can do angry, that's something she can handle. She knows where she stands, at least. Julie sits before she talks, rests a hand on Gill's calf, staring at her soft grey pyjama bottoms for a moment before looking up at her eyes and trying to read and understand what she's being told. It's like a foreign language dictionary without the English bits, just a list of stuff that you should understand, but you don't, because nobody's helping you, no matter how many times you flick backwards and forwards. 'I'm sorry, love. I shouldn't have left, it was stupid. Really stupid. Just - thought you might need some space. Something about flinging the crockery around made me feel like I wasn't being very helpful.' Her offering hangs in the air for a moment until Gill sucks in a breath and inhales her apology with it. Processing. What will come out of those soft, pressed-together lips next will determine her fate, Julie knows that. Thirty years of friendship and four of marriage, she's the world expert at arguing with Gill Murray, and even better at fixing it. Hopefully.   
  
'You don't need to apologise, Jules.' That's a rare one, much more lesser spotted than 'it's okay' or 'thank you for apologising' when she's feeling less forgiving. Julie doesn't recall ever being offered a 'you don't need to apologise' before, and she isn't quite sure what to do with it, it slips awkwardly out of Gill's mouth and even more awkwardly into Julie's hands. She's suddenly reminded of holding Baby Bailey for the first time, looking down at all this promise and only being able to think of how likely she was to suddenly forget how to hold stuff properly. 'Julie?' Christ, she hasn't even said anything, and it's been long, heavy seconds if not minutes since Gill last spoke. 'l - what's been up, Gill? I haven't - I feel like I haven't been getting you for the past few weeks. Haven't been on the same page. And I - David from David and Ben called, said he'd seen you wandering about in the dark this morning, in the rain. What were you doing, love?' She has to stop there, before the desperation to know and understand becomes even more palpable than it already is.   
  
'I heard a cat.' 'No you didn't, Gill. Don't - you're not getting away with that. Nobody runs out in the rain at five in the morning in their nighty because they heard a cat.' 'Well, they do. Because I did.' There's a deep sincerity in Gill's voice when she's being serious, which has thankfully been rarely in the past four years of their life together. 'Did you really? And what d'you mean heard a cat, anyway? Heard a cat doing what?' Gill's mouth turns down at the corners, and Julie immediately worries that she's done this wrong, that Gill's going to turn around and say that it wasn't really a cat, of course it wasn't, you stupid gullible trusting idiot. 'She - the cat - she got hit. Some fucking twat - ' Gill huffs in one of those desperate breaths she only ever sucks in when she really needs the oxygen to keep her brain online '- in a shitty little sports car, tearing around at God know's what time, and I heard him go past fifty or so times and then - the cat. I couldn't - it had to be me. D'you get that, Jules? It had to be me.' Their eyes meet again, and there's a dark weight behind Gill's that she hates seeing, but that she understands. Everything comes back to the past in the end. 'What happened to her, mouse?' Julie asks very quietly when Gill looks less like she's going to burst into tears. She thinks she probably knows, but she can't fix it without knowing the whole story.   
  
'Oh, she's okay. I took her to the vets, in my jammies, probably looked like a right mess. Tipping it down too, I was freezing. Thank Christ you made me buy a proper coat, else I could've taken the poor vet lad's eyes out with my nipples' Gill grins, a little watery but firmer, stronger, and a bubbly little laugh escapes out of Julie's chest unbidden. 'She was okay? Well, then - good deed for the year done and dusted' Julie smiles gently, offering up absolution that Gill doesn't need, but she knows she craves, and it seems to sink in somewhere. They shift suddenly, moving without even thinking about it until Gill's tucked up against her chest, her smaller hand in Julie's warm one, her soft hair very slightly tickling Julie's nose as she inhales the smell of her, appley and clean. 'I'm sorry about the other day, when I lost my temper. Never meant to upset you, slap' Gill murmurs after a second, a blink and you'd miss it moment of genuine vulnerability. She hates apologising, and Julie's always understood where that comes from. 'What was it, that set you off?' she asks quietly, hoping Gill can hold out and let her in for just a few minutes longer. She won't draw it out, but she needs to understand if they're going to work though this. 'The wine, that stupid cheap Tesco wine. It was a - an experiment, I guess. A challenge. To see if I could drink again, in moderation, without becoming a total arse when it ran out and I didn't have an easy fix any more.' Gill exhales shakily as Julie inhales a little too sharply, and the opposite motions make Julie remember why she's her other half. 'S'okay, love. We've got to try these things sometimes to learn that it's not worth doing again, hm? Just - tell me next time, when you feel like doing a little experimenting.'   
  
They hold each other for a long while, both content now that the other is fundamentally okay and more importantly not going anywhere. Gill shows her some pictures of the cat, once she was tidied up and reunited with her actual family, and Julie briefly floats the idea of them adding to their family too. 'Janet' she remembers suddenly, earning a confused frown from Gill, and she grabs her phone from the side and quickly texts her.   
  
Stand down, J. She's alright-ish, workable. Fixable. Come over for tea, though? Promise not to make fish fingers. J xx  
  
She's immediately grateful for their first-day insistence that they do not, ever, read each other's texts over the other one's shoulder. Gill would take more offense at the notion of being fixable, thereby not quite held together at the moment, than she would at being alright-ish. Gill has this absolute need to be composed and polished, and Julie sees it as her life's work to show her that it's okay to not be, sometimes, in all sorts of different ways. 'Jan's coming for tea' she explains, and the way Gill's face lights up like it's the best gift she's ever received eases away the last of Julie's insecurities too. She must be an alright-ish wife, to make her smile like that. 'How's about we have a shower and get dressed up, hm? Make a bit of an effort.' It's a tried and true technique to help Gill feel better, encouraging her out of those pyjamas and into something glittery that makes her more inclined to dance around the kitchen, but it's really no hardship on her part either. Her wife is bloody beautiful, and she only needs to stop worrying so much sometimes and they'll be right, course they will. She can do that. For Gill she can do anything. Because of Gill, maybe. Either way, shower first, then sparkles. Thinking can wait.


End file.
